Tuesday, August 31, 2010

We have spent the last 72 thinking over a wide range of things DC. This AM it's the Blackbyrds. Sunday it was Alma Thomas and other areas painters. We are left with the impression that there is not a written record and that there should be.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

What we came to do today is drop the scienceand spread love your ways peoples. You better move something.’We get the fire started inside of the party.You know how my herd play love. You better move somethin.’Money grillin, gruntin, playin the role frontin.Get off the wall. Come have a ball. Killer move somethin.’Shit muh'fuckers recognize.It's Organized (fuck shit up). Bitch you better move somethin.’

We loves the internets as much as the next fella. But we also have to breath out before we praise again, just because it is such a thorough mixup.

As the sun comes up this morning, we've been living our own version of "Phonograph Blues"* w/ Robert Johnson, and we're prompted to look about for tools to assist us in our persistently (failing) sensemaking. Thus, a few bullets:

Lyrics and some sources. Delightfully free of popups and transparencies. Nothing special, but that's what we're looking for.

Songlists and discography. The former stands on its simplicity. The latter is an apt representation of the ball of confusion we call the recording innustry.

Wikipedia's bio page is not worth citing because it's cluttered with foolish references to the young Keith Richards, and can't resolve the unresolveables at the crossroads with the elegance the episode deserves. But some wikipedier has invested a great deal of time in a couple of song pages, so let's also commend them.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Prompted by both Giddins and Teachout, we have picked up a copy of Pops's second book. It is a brilliantly slow and clearspoken exercise in autoarchetyping, comparable not only with Sidney Bechet, but Ben Franklin.

Since this is nothing but a place for my repeater pencil, I'll be posting my favorite snippets from time to time. I just don't want to lose them.

...is what needs the attention here. This story, told better here, here and here, is about the scholar as much as it is about the scholarship. There is too much made of the language of the Sea Islands, an easy fascination even more easily taken to romanticism of pure folk roots, or maroonism, or something in between. We leave thinking more about the prodigious personal will of Lorenzo Dow Turner, who took an English degree and ,on the one hand, shaped it into an interdisciplinary knowhow and made sense of someone else's ways of knowing and, on the other hand, administered more than one university during the course of a career.

We are all about the simple act of making more available. The worst happens in shortages of what we need most. It is hard, on the other hand, to fight what is true when there is abundant evidence.

In this spirit we say thanks to the effort underway in Chicago to make sense of the boxes of stuff people have been holding on to. 'Though they offer perilously little of their holdings on the internets, still requiring the fare to roll into the library to learn, there are some tantalizing glimpses here.

Can you see the edifice Otis Jackson Jr. is building from your side of the horizon? It should be visible even from your distance from the street.

We're crawling up the side like your friendly neighborhood spiderman. From this vantage point Brovah Otis is lookin like Anansi, jyeah. Make of this giant web what you will, you cannot talk bad about its size, or its relentless creolization of everything touched by it.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Text stolen from yesterday's Observer. We're all up on Elephant Man, but there are plenty of leads to the island fresh worth following up on.

Other activities not directly related to the independence celebrations but taking place today include, the hip-hop dancehall show, Fully Loaded which takes place at The Old Coal Wharf Port Royal, and features Ricky Blaze, Tony Matterhorn, Bass Odyssey, Black Kat, Boom, Vertex, Sky Juice, Renaissance, ZJ Liquid, Bambino, DJ Shine, Flava Squad. Radio station, Fame FM hosts its Beach Fiesta at Sugarman's Beach, Portmore. For Jamaicans on the country's north coast, there is the party, Disturbia, Club Jamaica Jamaica in St Ann, featuring Elephant Man, Ishawna, Foota Hype, Bass Odyssey and DJ Pele. Lovers of old school music can also check out Yesterday, The Independence-Day Edition, to be held at Kingston's Mas Camp.